Dax’s shoulders eased a fraction. “If you want to stay, then you stay,” he said. “On your terms. No more deal, no more free-use. And if any of us crosses a line with you, you tell us. Even if it’s me.”
She nodded. In that moment, still sore, still humiliated, still shaken, she realized something important: These men might break her heart one day. They might let her down, make mistakes, hurt her in ways they didn’t intend. But for now, in this little cottage at the edge of the woods, they were trying. Trying to be better than what the world expected of men like them. Trying to make a place where she could be more than a body to be used and discarded. Trying, in their fumbling, flawed way, to be something like a family. She let out a long breath and lay back, their warmth surrounding her. “Okay,” she said softly. “We all stay. Together.”
Outside, the forest held its secrets. Inside, anger still simmered, hurt still throbbed, apologies still tangled on tongues. But under all the turmoil, the fragile threads binding them together held.
Chapter eighteen
Claiming her Throne
Themirrorwasnotbeautiful. That was the first thought that crept into Snow White’s mind when Harry pulled the reflective glass out from behind his back with a flourish. It wasn’t like her mother’s enchanted glass—tall as a man, its surface flawless, its frame carved with impossible detail. This one was human-made and humble: a simple rectangle of slightly warped glass set in a dark wooden frame, the edges nicked and worn. Maybe that was why she loved it immediately.
“Happy birthday,” Harry announced, though it wasn’t quite her birthday. He liked excuses. “Or half-birthday. Or ‘we didn’t get you anything last year because we were too busy ravishing you, so this is back pay.’”
Snow White’s laugh was surprised and soft. “What is it?” she asked, even though she could see perfectly well.
“A cow,” Harry said. “I brought you a cow. What do you think it is?”
Dax, sitting on the edge of the bed and untying his boots, snorted. Drew, hovering awkwardly near the door with a bundleof firewood in his arms, smiled a little. Harry stepped closer and held the mirror out.
Snow White wiped her hands automatically on her apron before taking it, as if it were something delicate and easily smudged. It was heavier than it looked. The wood was solid, the glass cool beneath her fingertips. She turned it, watching the light from the window stutter across the surface. For a moment, all she saw was blur: the cottage behind her, Harry’s expectant face, a hint of her own outline. Then the image steadied. She saw herself properly for the first time in years.
“I found it in town,” Harry was saying, voice suddenly more tentative. “In a trader’s cart. Thought maybe… I don’t know. You might want to see what we all see.”
“I haven’t…” Her voice trailed off. She swallowed, throat tightening. “I haven’t had a mirror since I was a child, when my mother redecorated the castl—” She stopped, the old word slipping too close to the tongue. “—my home,” she finished. “She took them all down.”
Harry glanced at Dax over her shoulder; Dax’s gaze sharpened briefly, filing away that near-slip. Drew shifted, setting the wood down quietly so it wouldn’t break the moment.
Snow White lifted the mirror, angling it toward her face. For a heartbeat, she didn’t recognize the girl staring back. She had known, in an abstract way, that her hair had grown. She felt it when she lay down, when she washed it by the stream, when she braided it into a quick, practical plait. But seeing it now—falling in dark, heavy waves around her shoulders, the ends brushing the tops of her breasts—made something shift in her chest. It was glossy in the dim light, black as raven wings—a raven, like her father’s coat of arms. It framed a face she knew and did not know: cheekbones a little sharper than she remembered, jawline a little stronger. Her skin, though not untouched by sun and work, was still pale, still smooth. Her lips, without paint,were the deep red they had always been, the color standing out stark against everything else. She looked like her mother. The realization hit like cold water. It made her stomach drop, her fingers tighten on the frame. Only… not quite. Her mother’s beauty had always felt like a blade: honed, polished, designed to cut. What Snow White saw in the mirror now had softer edges. There was a kindness in the set of her mouth, a lingering openness in her eyes that Liora had long since lost. “I…” She couldn’t quite find the words.
Behind her, Harry came to stand at one shoulder, Dax at the other. Drew lingered near the end of the bed, his usual silence even heavier. “See?” Harry said, his voice gentler than his usual jokes. “Told you. We’re not just being polite.”
“Are you just noticing how beautiful you are?” Dax asked, one brow lifting.
She didn’t answer. Couldn’t. Her throat was too tight. She thought of Hunter calling her “Liora” in the forest, eyes clouded with lust and confusion. The insult of it had burned then, the way he’d tried to overwrite her with the image of the woman who had ordered her death.
Now, seeing how closely her features reflected Liora’s, she understood. It stung in a different way. But there was something else, too. Something newer. Power. She watched herself in the glass as she tilted her chin a fraction higher. The small adjustment transformed the line of her neck, made her look less like someone waiting for orders and more like someone accustomed to giving them. She straightened her spine. Her shoulders slid back. The girl in the mirror shed some of her uncertainty like an old cloak. A faint, almost unfamiliar surge swelled in her chest. This is me, she thought. Not just someone’s daughter. Not just someone’s bargain.
Harry seemed to sense the shift. “Stand up,” he said softly. “Here.” He took the mirror from her and stepped back so shehad space. She set aside her apron, smoothing her palms down the front of her plain dress.
“I don’t remember… what I really look like,” she admitted, fingers fiddling with the laces at her bodice. “Only shadows in polished pots and water.”
“Well,” Harry said, “lucky for you, we’re about to fix that.” He held the mirror at an angle where she could see herself from mid-thigh up. Dax moved behind her.
She felt the warmth of him before she felt his hands—large, steady palms settling lightly on her upper arms. He caught her eye in the reflection. “Breathe,” he said quietly. “Just look.” She did. Her hair gleamed, her cheeks were flushed, her eyes were bright. She looked… alive. More alive than the princess in her childhood memories, whose beauty had always seemed like a performance put on for someone else’s gaze.
“Let’s see all of you,” Drew chimed in.
Before she could protest, Dax’s fingers found the ties at the back of her dress. He worked them loose with practiced efficiency, the fabric slackening around her torso. He didn’t yank it down. He peeled it. He slid the shoulders off slowly, letting the worn material drag over the tops of her arms, along the curve of her breasts. The coarse wool rasped lightly over sensitive skin, sending little jolts through her. Her nipples tightened under the thin chemise she wore beneath. The dress puddled at her feet.
In the mirror, she saw herself in nothing but that thin undergarment—white now gone off-white from countless washings, clinging to her from shoulder to mid-thigh. Dax’s gaze met hers in the glass, asking a silent question. She lifted her chin fractionally. “Keep going,” she told him, surprising herself with how steady she sounded.
His fingers found the hem of the chemise and drew it up, slow enough that she could stop him at any point. The fabric slid over her thighs, her hips, the dip of her waist, the underside ofher breasts. Each inch of bare skin revealed felt both terrifying and exhilarating. When the chemise cleared her head, the air of the room kissed her nakedness. She stood there, bare in front of three men and, more importantly, before herself.
Her breasts were fuller than she remembered from the castle days, the weight of them pulling comfortably against her chest. Her nipples were a light rose, hardening further under their own reflection and the cool brush of air. Her waist curved into hips that had grown womanly with use and time. Her gaze dipped lower, to the dark triangle of hair at the juncture of her thighs, to the way the muscles there had firmed from riding and work. She saw the swell of her labia, the subtle gleam of moisture there that made color rise to her cheeks. She thought she would have felt shame. She felt… tall.
“Look at you,” Harry crooned, awe in his tone. “If you walked into any court dressed like that, the queen would faint dead away.”
“The queen already did,” Snow White said before she could stop herself. The slip hit her like a slap. She swallowed. “In one story, anyway.”
